Part of your responsibility in this course will be keeping a field journal.  A significant portion (typically 40%) of your final mark will be based on the results of your journal-keeping efforts.  This document includes notes and instructions about keeping a field journal and lists the equipment you will need.  Please pay very close attention to these instructions:  experience teaches us that many students seem to miss the point of what a journal really is about.

The tradition of a field journal:

The study of plants and animals in their natural environment requires observations at all levels of organization from the individual organism to the ecosystem, and includes behaviour, life history traits, distribution, abundance, habitat, landscape and all kinds of interrelationships.  The field journal is the naturalist/ecologist's record of all of these matters as they present themselves to the observer.  Such journals date back a very long time, and, until the beginning of the 20th. century, keeping a daily field journal was an understood activity for any field biologist.  Charles Darwin kept one throughout his entire nearly-five-year voyage aroud the world, and it formed the basis of several of his eventual publications.

A field journal is a permanent record of observations and, if it is to fulfill its purpose, it should be useful and comprehensible to others, perhaps long after the author is dead.  The field journal is also a workbook in which your observational skills are repeatedly and continuously tested and sharpened.  One of our primary general concerns in this course is to provoke a curiosity about the natural world and help polish the skills needed to answer that curiosity:  comprehensive yet precise observation accompanied by careful & succinct description.  

    In short:  

Be alert & inquiring at all times!  
Look hard at things!  
See what you're looking at!  
Record reliably what you see!

A standard field journal:

The method we will be using is based on that developed by Joseph Grinnel, at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, University of California at Berkeley.  Grinnel kept formal field notes from New Years Day 1894, when he was 17, until five days before his death in 1939.  The method he employed is still regarded as the standard in biological journal keeping.

The standard field journal consists of three components:
 

 1. JOURNAL: a narrative diary of daily observations, including locality information, weather and conditions and species lists;

 2. SPECIES ACCOUNTS: running notes on individual observations of selected species; and

 3. CATALOGUE: a systematic and sequential list of all captures and collections, including reference numbers.
 

The standard field journal is written up directly, without transcribing field notes, but this requires a discipline and a life style which is not reasonable to expect on a trip like ours.  You should therefore take rough notes during the day in a FIELD NOTEBOOK, and organize and transcribe those notes in the evening.

Equipment:

The journal and species accounts should be written in black, water proof, fade proof pigment ink on one side of good quality paper.  An ideal size is about 8.5" x 5.5" (21.6 x 14 cm), or about half the size of a regular letter sheet, but you may use a slightly larger format if you prefer.   The paper should be ruled with horizontal blue lines about 7 mm apart.  You will need a left margin, but it is better to rule these yourself.   Loose leaf sheets have the advantage that can be sorted and appropriately ordered in a binder (and you can easily discard your mistakes), but if you use a bound notebook the sheets won't get lost or blown away. The journal pages are consecutive, and each page must be numbered.

Sometimes, punched paper of the size recommended is hard to find and the binders, if available, can be expensive.   Staples/Business Depot stocks both.  We recommend that, if you decide to go for a bound notebook it be HARDBACK and about the right size (9.25' x 7.25'/ 235 mm x 184 mm is fine).  DON'T use a spiral bound book with perforated pages.   

You will also need a pigment ink pen and a straight edge for drawing lines.  A detailed list of the equipment you will need is attached at the end of these notes.
 

THE JOURNAL:

The journal is the nucleus of your field records.  It is a precise daily account of your many observations, and it should be given high priority, even when you are short of time or exhausted.  Remember, the rule:

The journal should maximize information while employing economy of style.  It is a complete  account of your observations, and should be directly quotable.  Write in full sentences as a general rule. 

Include observational details that may may seem obvious at the time (you never know when what you observe might be important, and just because you know something, doesn't mean anyone else does).  Remember the journal is a scientific report intended for use by others as well as yourself.   It is NOT a diary, so avoid fantasy, reverie, comments on your love life and trivia about how many eggs you had for breakfast (unless they were Gambel's Quail eggs).

The journal should be as neat as the physical conditions allow, and written in black pigment ink. Legibility, permanence and economy of space are important attributes. 

Daily accounts should be written consecutively.  Pages should be numbered and a margin about 2.5 cm wide should be drawn down the left hand side of the page.  Write on one side of the paper only.   Fill every page, and do not start a new page for each new day.   The year  and your name and initials should be written in the left hand margin at the top of  every page.   The date should be written in the margin where each new daily account begins and on the first line of every continuation page.

Each daily account should contain the following standard information.  You can use sub-headings, but that shouldn't be necessary unless you wish to remind yourself that all the bases are covered.  Keep a list of the topics handy as a checklist taped to the inside of the journal cover.

          Date:   Write the date out in the following format:   "10 May"  in the left hand margin.

Locality (and /or route):   Be as concise as possible without sacrificing accuracy.  Order the information so that it goes from the most detailed to the most general e.g. 2 km E of San Simon on State Hwy. 83, Pima County, Arizona.  Distances should be straight-line distances, not route distances.  You will typically give much more information about localities where we stop to do work of one sort or another than about regions through which we travel.  Both vans carry GPS units, so you can obtain latitude and longitude at any point in the trip.

When travelling, which we do much of, we have the opportunity to notice many ecological transitions or contrasts.  It is especially useful to make clear note of these matters, since the information serves several useful functions:  

1. It provides direct description of the ecological conditions on the ground where and when those observations are made;  this can be vaulable in later investigations of ecological trends over time.  
2. Such information is extremely valuable in providing concrete examples of major ecological phenomena, say, the trend from oak woodlands, through desert grassland to upland desert and on to creosote bush flats, that are a major focus of this course.  
3. The information will help you remember where you've been, where photographs were taken etc. years after the memories of much of the trip have faded.  

It is easy when travelling to become bogged down in details of the occurence of individual species and miss the bigger picture—the landscape and vegetation trends—as it goes by.  Be aware at all times how your environment is changing, and seek to explain those changes in terms of climatic or other factors

GIVEN ALL THIS, it is critical, when travelling, to know what road you are on.  Keep your eyes open for such things as the landscape and the character of the vegetation, and make clear notes that can be unambiguously pegged to some reasonably small segment of a highway. Simply saying Interstate 8 is of little use, since it is a very long road, even in Arizona.  SO you must try to be aware at all times of where you are, and transfer locality info. to your notes as you make them.  Look for mile-posts or intersection numbers;  be absolutely sure what road you are on;  know which towns are ahead or behind, and how far away they are.  Both vans have an assortment of maps of different types and scales;  they are there to be used.

The DATE and LOCALITY should be underlined.  Start the underlining under the date and continue straight across the page.   Underline subsequent lines of the locality only to the right of the margin.

Weather: Record the weather at dawn, dusk and midday, or when the weather changes significantly during the day—say rain- or wind-storms, cloud cover etc.  Essentials to include are temperature ( C), wind speed (in Beaufort Scale or km/hr), cloud cover (in 10ths of the sky covered), and precipitation.

Here is the Beaufort wind scale:

Elevation:   Approximate elevation in metres above sea level.

Description of the locality:   Give a description of the landscape and vegetation type at each locality, including dominant or important plant species where possible.  When traveling, give a synopsis of the vegetation types passed through during the day.  This will be easy if you have kept good,clear notes as you go along.  Your journal doesn't end end each day when you step from the vans at the end of the day's travel!  It should include a description of the landscape, vegetation-type, including dominant &/or prominent species) of each campsite, as well as the observations made during the afternoon and evening.

Time:  Recording time is important for special events, or for describing how long was spent in a particular location or at a particular activity.

Daily account: This should be a brief record of the main features of the day, and your observations.   Include special activities such as an early morning bird walk, and interesting facts such as the phenology of plant species.  Keep the style succinct, but try and avoid being telegraphic.  Use maps, photos and drawings that can be placed on the back of the written journal sheets, on the facing page, or in the text.  In the narrative, scientific names should be underlined with a straight line (the typographer's code for italics), and common names should be underlined with a wavy line to make them stand out.

Species lists: Record a list of all the bird and mammal species recorded each day or at each location, plus lists of any other species of interest (such as plants where they are identified). Always annotate the species lists with additional information such as how many individuals (estimated by order of magnitude), whether the observation was a sign, sight, sound or capture record, whether a species account has been written, whether a photograph was taken, and so on.  You don't have to underline species names if you write them in a column.

You can use marginal symbols for annotating species lists and some paragraphs of the narrative.  If you do use symbols or abbreviations you MUST provide a legend.  Who will know what you mean in a hundred years?

Below is an example of a journal page:
 
 

THE SPECIES ACCOUNTS:  

Species accounts are organized so that i) all references to, and notes about, a particular species appear in one place, and ii) there are not long accounts and details of species scattered & virtually inaccessible, in the journal.  If you want to know everything you noted abouta particular species you don't have to wade through pages of daily journal to find the reference; each species will have a page to itself.

Theoretically, you should have a species account for all species, and keep track of all the sightings and occurrences of it every day.  In practice, this is not possible on a trip like ours.  Species accounts should be for detailed notes on species of interest.

Each species should have one or more pages to itself.  Pages should be numbered individually for each species.  The overall format is the same as for the journal.  Write your initials and name and the year in margin at the top of each page.  Write the date (DD Month) in the margin and start the locality information on the same line.   Underline the date and locality right across the page.  Write a new entry immediately under the previous one, each time you record the species.  If you are in the same place two or more days running the locality information can just be "as above".

The species account is the place to write down a detailed description of the species and your observations of behaviour, ecology,  phenology, morphology, reproduction and so on.  You may also want to include the results of measurements and surveys.  Drawings, maps and diagrams are appropriate.  You do not have to be an artist to make effective use of drawing.  If it is any consolation, Carl Linnaeus produced some pretty strange drawings in his excellent journal of his travels in Lapland.

Maximize the information, and write with a clear purpose.  Be as exact as you can, but avoid repeating too much information in the species account and daily journal.  Give approximate numbers rather than descriptive terms like "some", "few" or "many".  Estimated numbers should be rounded off by zeros (10, 40, 700,
15000). 

Below is an example of a page from a species account:

THE FIELD NOTEBOOK:

The field notebook is the basis for your record keeping.  Get in the habit of looking around intelligently and writing down EVERYTHING, all the time, whatever the conditions.  You won't actually manage this, but it is to be seriously aimed for.  Write notes at the time of your observations or YOU WILL FORGET.   Your field notebook should become an extension of your being, and you should always carry it with you.  It should be small enough to fit comfortably in a pocket.   As long as you can understand it at the end of the day, when you come to transcribe the information, it doesn't really matter how untidy or telegraphic your style (and it may be both if you are traveling in a van on a bumpy road).  This is where you can also jot down things like the addresses of people you meet, good restaurants and petty expenditures - stuff that has no place in your Field Journal.

If things are happening very fast, or very slowly, make a note of the time at which you make entries.  For example if you are watching a bird build a nest you may be timing things every minute or so.  If you go to sleep in the van and wake up in completely new surroundings, you should make a note of how much time you missed.

Keeping a good journal:
You will not only get credit for your journal, but it will become a permanent memento of your trip, and will contain valuable scientific information that may be used by someone decades later.

Being organized, alert and disciplined are the keys to good journal writing

No-one should pretend this is easy, but with practice you will improve and find it easier;  eventually it will become second nature.   Learning to keep a good journal will develop and sharpen your observation skills.  Below are some hints to keep you on the straight and narrow.

• Take good field notes.  
  The key to this is staying alert, engaged and questioning all the time:  When travelling, what vegetation-type do I see out the van window?  What trends have I been witnessing?  How are these things to be interpreted?  
  When taking walks or collecting data, ask yourself questions about what you are seeing:  What is the structure of plant X? Does it have spines or thorns? Is it highly aromatic? How are its leaves built?  Why?  Do these specimens look like the species did elsewhere?  Why not?  
  Interrogate your environment!  Make sure you know where you are, and that you convey this completely unambiguously to your notes.
• Allow time at the end of the day to write your journal, and make it a priority, even at the expense of observing time.
• Make transcribing field notes part of your daily routine.
• Don't be daunted by the task, or spend hours in preparation.  Just do it.
• Be legible, and as neat as you can, but don't make calligraphy a priority.
• Cultivate brevity.  Quality, not quantity is the key.
• If you get behind, do not compound the problem.  Better write a good account  for today than spend the time trying to catch up from yesterday.
• Minimize repetition between the journal and species accounts.
• Alcohol consumption will adversely affect your ability to transcribe field notes.  Hold back until after you are through with your journal.

Equipment list:

You should  acquire, and bring with you, the following equipment:

Field Note Book

A small sturdy notebook which you carry with you everywhere.  It is best if it fits in your pocket.

 Blueline have an excellent selection of sturdy notebooks with strong, flexible, black covers.  They come in various sizes and binding types to suit your personality, and you should be able to get them at a good stationery store.

Also excellent are surveyors' field note books and level books.  These are made by several companies suck as Sokkia.  They are quite large (18 x 11.5 cm) and hardbound, so they are not very comfortable to keep in a pocket.   They are also pretty expensive (about $9 each).  However they are very strong, and the paper is water resistant.  You would need to go to a store which sells surveying equipment for this type of book.

Field note books fill up quickly if you are taking good notes;   make sure you bring enough to last!

Looseleaf, line-ruled paper about 8.5" x 5.5" and a binder, OR  hardbound notebooks about the same size.   Staples/Business Depot sells the right kind of three-ring binders for about $4.50.  Hilroy paper refills (#05-851) are also available and exactly what you need, at about $2.50 for a packet of 50 sheets.

- Make sure the paper quality is as good as you can get.
- Tear-off pages in notebooks tend to come loose, and escape, under field conditions.
- Avoid multi-subject notebooks with chunks cut out of the paper.
- Try and get notebooks without ruled margins.

Again, count on writing several pages a day, so bring enough!
 

Tradition demands that your journal be written in drawing ink with a technical pen, but this is not practical.  Technical pens often clog, are easily damaged, and they tend to leak, especially when you, leave them in the sun, take them on airplanes or dash up and down mountains.  There are a number of good fibre-tip pens and roller balls now available which contain waterproof, fade proof drawing ink.  Go to a drafting supply or art store.

The fibre-tip pens come in various widths to suit your personality and writing style.  There are several brands.  The best I have found are Pilot Drawing Pens (Pigment Ink Type), but Micron Pigma pens are also good.  An excellent rolling ball pen with waterproof and fade proof ink is the Uniball Vision.

DO NOT USE   permanent marker pens or black ball-points.

You will be drawing margins and doing quite a lot of underlining.  Bring a straight edge (either a ruler or a set square) which is long enough to go down the page in one shot.

You may find sticky tabs useful to mark the pages in your Species Accounts.   There are several removable tabs which will serve the purpose.

Since several people may have equipment that is similar to yours, it is a good idea to mark everything in a distinctive way, such as covering binders or notebooks and using coloured tape.